Friday 5 September 2014

Radishes - a minor success

I'm usually able to grow radishes fairly successfully in my raised beds, but I often struggle to get them to grow in pots. They usually bolt before bulbing-up. A few weeks ago I had sudden urge to sow some radish seeds, but there was no room in the beds, so I rather reluctantly sowed some in some pots of compost. I sowed one on 27th July and another on 2nd August, hoping to get a staggered harvest. Each pot only held about 20 seeds.

Whether it was due to the weather (August was awful), or whether I used two different types of compost, I don't know, but they fared very differently. The first lot was initially nibbled by a caterpillar when they were still small, which nearly wiped them out, but fortunately they recovered though they then developed very slowly, producing some very dense, strong-flavoured radishes that were only just edible. The other lot, sowed a week later were completely different and very much better. Here is photo of the two pots side by side:


Since Jane is going away this week to spend a few days with our daughter in France, I wanted to harvest the radishes before she disappeared, even though they are mostly still on the small side. Here you see the evidence that I did indeed grow them in a pot:


There were only about a dozen that were worth picking, but in my eyes that is nonetheless a significant victory!


See, there are a couple of very nice ones in that bunch. They are "Cherry Belle", by the way.


I don't think this is going to persuade me to regularly grow radishes in pots, but at least it proves that it can be done.

5 comments:

  1. I used to grow radishes in pots all the time and they always did well, but more recently, I'm struggling. I'm not doing anything different, obviously it's different compost, but I don't know why I'm having this trouble all of a sudden.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think the small victories like this one are just as satisfying as the big successes in the garden, it's what makes gardening so addictive.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What type of compost did you use as we had problems with radish grown in compost and are now trying some in John Innes

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am not 100% sure, but I think it was the New Horizon stuff. I'm beginning to think I need to record what compost I use for EVERYTHING now - although even bags from the same brand can be completely different.

      Delete
    2. It was New Horizon that ours didn't grow in. Lots of leaf and no root to speak of.

      Delete

Thank you for taking time to leave me a comment! Please note that Comment Moderation is enabled for older posts.